


Not a good man

by cyanspark



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Victim Blaming, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanspark/pseuds/cyanspark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You look at your own face on that glass wall, a memorial for a hero. You think, bitterly, that this is all a great big joke, and someone, somewhere, is laughing at you.</p>
<p>Because you are no hero.</p>
<p>(A Bucky Barnes character study.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a good man

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ghost in the machine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606352) by [cyanspark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanspark/pseuds/cyanspark). 



> Please see tags for warnings, and feel free to let me know if there's anything I missed.

You carry the name of a president, a man who lived and died long before you were born. Not someone famous like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, but a man who closed out his presidency in the looming shadow of the war that would tear the country apart. A man your history teacher barely devotes five minutes to, before rushing off to gush over Lincoln for the next several classes.  
  
(You don’t pay that much attention in school, never did, but the sound of the man who shares your name makes you sit up straighter and listen, because you want to know.)  
  
You’re unimpressed with your namesake, and you never did like the sound of “James” too much. It’s like a hand-me-down suit jacket that’s three sizes too big and doesn’t fit you at all.  
  
You do not care for living up to legacies. Before you ever learned about President James Buchanan, you’ve already decided that your life is your own and you will make your future with your own two hands.  
  
*  
  
You learn, early on, that life is as capricious as a coin toss and fate loves to laugh at men’s misfortunes. You watch the world with wide eyes; you see the glittering wealth of the rich and the grimy despair of the poor, and you watch your parents work so hard day after day but you know they will never have as much money as those people who live in their mansions and drive around in gleaming cars. You see people breathe their last, wasted away by disease or poverty, and death is a difficult concept for a child but you know they did not deserve this.  
  
You look for answers in the faith and the God that your parents revere so strongly. You ask, but all you receive is silence, and your belief in divine justice dims.  
  
You are only a child, but you do not like the feeling of helplessness and fear that rises up in you when you see that life isn’t fair. It makes something burn in your chest, makes you lash out with your fists and feet when the other boys say something you don’t like or look at you the wrong way.  
  
You like fighting. You are not big, but you are wiry and strong, and it comes easily to you. You like giving in to that chaotic rush that fills your veins with a wild, laughing, angry joy. But most of all, you like to win. To show the world that you will not stand by and let yourself be broken. You are the master of your destiny and nothing can take that away from you.  
  
*  
  
You remember the day everything changes.  
  
It’s a sticky summer afternoon, the sun’s rays pressing hard enough on your neck and face to draw out sweat that drenches your shirt. You are leaving school when you hear the sounds of a scuffle, blunt and ugly, and when you find the source of the noise, you see three boys beating up a much smaller one.  
  
You think about the injustice of life. You see the bruises already forming on the smaller boy’s pale skin; he keeps getting up whenever they knock him down, but you know he has no chance. Blood thunders in your ears, and you throw yourself into the fray.  
  
Your fists were itching for a fight anyways. You hear the solid smack of your knuckles against flesh, you hear grunts and curses and you laugh in their faces until they’ve scrambled away to lick their wounds.  
  
You run your tongue over your split lip, grimacing at the sting and the coppery taste of it, and saunter over to the boy.  
  
“You okay?” you ask.  
  
“Y-yeah,” the boy stammers. He looks up at you with awe in his wide blue eyes, and for the first time in your life, you feel useful. You feel  _good_.  
  
“Thanks,” he says. “I’m Steve. Steve Rogers.”  
  
“James Barnes,” you drawl, holding out a hand to help him up. “Call me Bucky.”  
  
You do not know it, then, but that is the moment your life changes forever.  
  
*  
  
Steve is not like you. He is scrawny and bony and weak, but he’s too dumb not to shut his mouth and run away from a fight when he sees something that he thinks is wrong. And you like that. Everyone else sees him as the weird, sickly kid who gets himself beat up all the time, but you like his optimism, his determination, the way the world seems to have a golden shine in his eyes.  
  
And you feel like your life has a new purpose now. Now, instead of starting fights, you finish the ones that Steve gets himself into. You are his protector, and that thought makes you feel good about yourself. The anger in your veins has dulled to a quiet murmur.  
  
So you clean yourself up, straighten your shirt, and greet Mrs. Rogers with a smile and a “How do you do, ma’am?” those times when you have to drag Steve home. She looks at you warily, at first—you, with your bruises and scrapes and blood on your mouth, don’t look like the kind of boy who would be Steve Rogers’s friend. But then Steve tells her how you saved him from bullies, and her expression softens and she invites you in for tea.  
  
(You like spending your afternoons at the Rogerses’. You like looking through Steve’s sketches as he talks shyly about how he wants to be an artist; you like pulling pillows from the couch and making a fort on the carpet; you like listening to Steve and his mother swap stories about their days, and seeing the gentle love they have for each other shine through their eyes.)  
  
Your childhood passes in a wash of golden afternoons and laughter and wading in to finish Steve’s fights and jazz music wafting from the radio and clammy bottles of cold soda under a steaming August sun. You look into Steve’s wide blue eyes and you see content eternity reflected there.  
  
*  
  
In 1929, you are twelve years old, and the radio is suddenly squawking day and night about Wall Street and something called a stock market crash. You don’t understand what this means, but you do see the way your parents’ faces sag when they think you’re not looking, and you hear them talk in low tones about money.  
  
Life gets harder for everyone. The rich aren’t so flashy anymore but the poor get even poorer, and when you walk around Brooklyn you see the cardboard shacks that have sprung up in every park and the swarms of people trying to sell apples on the streets. Everywhere you look, there are faces full of despair. You don’t know why this crash happened and you wonder, but no one can give you an answer. You think about coin tosses, and the worry on your parents’ faces makes the anger surge in your veins again. When you’re old enough to finish school, you bounce from job to job, carefully hoarding your meager salary and praying you don’t get laid off.  
  
But you still have a roof over your head and a warm dinner at night, which is more than you can say for many others, and you still have Steve, who hasn’t lost any of the innocence in his eyes despite the changes. So it’s hard, but you suppose it’s not all bad.  
  
*  
  
Steve doesn’t stop getting into fights now that he’s out of school. Bullies are the same everywhere. Except now, men are even bigger and meaner and the fights get dirtier.  
  
One time he gets the both of you into a nasty scrap when he yells at some men outside a bar for harassing a young girl. You know, from the expressions on their faces, that this fight is going to be ugly.  
  
It is ugly. It is dirty.  
  
“Leave him alone!” you bellow, but you’re trying to fight off two men at the same time and the third is pummeling Steve into the ground. You see blood. You see red.  
  
Someone grabs you. You sink your teeth in his arm. You slam your bruised fists into skulls and your feet into soft parts, not caring how much they howl in pain. You lunge at the man kicking Steve on the ground and for a minute you tussle viciously with him on the ground, snarling at him like an animal. Your groping fingers find something hard. You pick it up and hit him over the head.  
  
He goes limp, his eyes rolling back until only the whites show. But you are not done, they hurt Steve and they will _pay_ , you raise the brick in your hand—  
  
“Bucky, stop!” Steve chokes out.  
  
There’s something in his eyes that makes you freeze. You toss away the brick, spit at the others who are still conscious, and threaten them with worse if they ever come at you or Steve again.  
  
Later, the two of you have crashed at your place, and you’re pressing towels soaked in cold water to Steve’s swollen eye.  
  
“Were you gonna kill him?” Steve asks quietly.  
  
You snort. “It wouldn’t’ve killed him. Maybe dented his skull a little.” At Steve’s silence, you press, “Come on, he nearly pounded you into paste, you can’t just let him get away with—”  
  
“Bucky,” Steve says, and his voice is chiding but there’s also something heavy about it.  
  
Your mouth snaps shut. “Fine,” you say. “Fine.”  
  
You are not like Steve. You know this, have known this for a long time. But when he looks at you like this, you feel...you are not sure what you feel. You think, just for one second, he can see every part of you—every selfish, uncharitable thought, every insecurity, every fear, and  _no, don’t look, please don’t see_.  
  
Neither of you mentions this night again.  
  
*  
  
Sarah Rogers is too good to die, but death comes for her all the same. It’s not fair. You see the way Steve withdraws into himself in the days afterward, the way he drifts through life like a ghost and spends his weekends shut up in his apartment with the curtains drawn and his things strewn everywhere, and you curse and spit at a God who would allow so much suffering to fall on the skinny shoulders of someone as good and kind as Steve.  
  
You find excuses to invite yourself over to Steve’s place, and by the time winter rolls around you’ve practically moved in.  
  
“Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t die of pneumonia,” you snort when Steve tries to protest. He huffs skeptically and you grin, but you can’t hide the seed of worry that’s always there in the back of your mind, ready to bloom into full-fledged panic at the slightest cough or sneeze.  
  
That sense of urgency sinks hard-edged roots into your soul when your folks die (your mother gets sick and doesn’t get better; they tell you your father was in a training exercise that went wrong). You are dry-eyed at the funerals, but if you go out for some hard drinking at night and turn up at Steve’s apartment with red-rimmed eyes and bruised knuckles and blood at the corners of your mouth, well, he doesn’t say anything; he just lets you in.  
  
(You start fights that you have no chance of winning because you are angry, you are  _angry_ , you have been forced to sacrifice so much at the altar of fate and you want to scream that you are the master of your own destiny, you will not let yourself be broken, you will  _not_.)  
  
Steve is all you have now. He is your family. Life has taken more from you than you ever wanted to give but you will not give him up, not ever.  
  
And there are close calls, too many to count. You spend your winter nights more often than not wrapping Steve up in every spare blanket you can find, laying cool towels on his forehead when he gets too hot, and shielding him from the cold with your own warm body when the furnace isn’t working like it should. He is so small, and so frail, barely more than skin and bones, his breath thick with snot and fever. You worry that this time he’ll be done for, and the thought almost drives you mad, because Steve, kind-hearted Steve with his innocent eyes and warm smile, doesn’t deserve to die.  
  
You work extra shifts to scrounge up enough money for medicine, but that’s all you can do. (You think about stealing more—you’d do it, to save him, but if he finds out he would be so disappointed in you, so you don’t.) You can save him from bruises and bloody noses, but you can’t do a thing in the face of his sickness. You are helpless. Your blood burns with fury.  
  
 _You can’t have him_ , you silently hiss at fate, at the specter of death you sometimes think you can almost see looming over his bed.  _I won’t let you have him._  
  
*  
  
Your life is simple. It is a small apartment, crowded but cozy, with sketches spread out over the tables; it is the rare celebration, like Christmas or Steve’s birthday, that you spend weeks saving money to buy something special for so you can see his eyes light up with happiness; it is nights spent drinking in bars, dancing to soft jazz with a dame in your arms.  
  
You are handsome and charismatic and charming when you want to be, and women gravitate toward you. The same can’t be said for Steve, and you think it’s not fair that they take one look at his short, skinny stature and turn up their noses. You try your best to set up double dates for him, but they never pan out. When you are there, women only ever see him as your shadow. It’s not true, of course it’s not, but you don’t know how to explain that he is not just your family and your best friend, but your better half, so you don’t.  
  
Years pass, and the hard times begin to ease up a little. As the decade turns, the papers start to speak of war across the sea. You don’t pay any attention to it, but Steve does. He spends many nights after a long day at work talking animatedly about what’s going on in Europe, how it ain’t right that Hitler’s invading other countries and somebody oughtta do something. You listen, and nod along, but you don’t make much of it. It’s someone else’s problem, not yours.  
  
*  
  
Then December 7, 1941 dawns with a rumble of far-off explosions and newspaper headlines screaming war in bold black letters. Steve, patriotic, idealistic Steve, tries to enlist again and again. You know the army won’t take him, because he’s too small and has a list of health problems that would make any doctor’s head spin. But you still breathe easier when he comes home with disappointment written all over his face. Maybe it’s a little selfish of you but you will not let death take the last person you care most about. You won’t.  
  
You do not enlist, of course. You are going to stay home and look after Steve. It’s a fantasy, a lie that you tell yourself, because you’ve already had to register for the draft and they need as many strong young men as they can get, but you tell yourself that they won’t pick you, that they’ll have enough men to leave you unscathed.  
  
The coin of fate flips. It doesn’t land in your favor.  
  
You come home one day to see an envelope from the Selective Service Headquarters with your name printed on it, and your heart turns to ice.  
  
You try, frantically, to apply for conscientious objector status. But you are a strong young man, whose family has a history of military service, and you are not nearly religious enough to sound convincing. You are denied.  
  
The day before you have to report for Basic, you tell Steve that you enlisted. You watch his face fall, and you pretend it doesn’t hurt to see him this way.  
  
*  
  
You go to Basic.  
  
They tell you that you are a fine soldier. They praise you for your marksmanship skills, fast-track you to sergeant, and you accept it all in stride. You do not have any feelings either way. All you care about is staying alive, and if your sharpshooting and your shiny new rank and your cold focus help you, then so much the better for that.  
  
When you were a boy, you listened to your father’s tales of the Great War, the grime and misery of the trenches and the horror of mustard gas, and you know that war is not glory, no matter what the propaganda posters and the radio say. You know war means death. You hide your apprehension with wide grins and a crisp, sharply-pressed uniform and a hat tilted jauntily on your head, because you do not want Steve to see how scared you are. No. Anything but let him know the truth.  
  
“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” you tell him. You don’t say, “ _if_  I get back.” You don’t say, “ _if_  I survive.” Lies are lies but they are pretty and they are soothing and they sound so much better than the harsh truth. You lie to yourself and pretend that you will shoot a few Nazis and then come home, and you and Steve will go on just as you had before.  
  
Your only solace is believing that even if Steve tries to enlist again at the fair, there’s no way they’ll take him.  
  
*  
  
You think you understand the horrors of war, but you don’t, not really, until you’re there. Everything is the shrieking of gunfire and the screams of dying men and explosions of dirt and ohGodpleaseGodIdon’twannadiepleasedon’tletmedie.  
  
You think you understand the horrors of war, but you don’t, not really, until you’re captured by HYDRA and sent to the isolation ward, where you learn that there are fates worse than death.  
  
You know no one has come back from the isolation ward alive. After a few days, you shuck your naïve, desperate hope that you will be rescued. You see, then, your weakness and your helplessness and your painfully obvious insignificance. Your country does not care that you live or die. They will not rescue you.  
  
( _But Steve, you think, what about Steve, who’s gonna look after him and make sure he’s okay and I can’t die, I can’t die, I told him I’d be with him ‘til the end of the line—_ )  
  
Everything else falls away. You are nothing but a name, rank, serial number, and pain, ever-constant pain. You are anger and fear, twisting together hot and cold in your gut, and  _you hate_  this, you hate your weakness and your helplessness, you’d kill them all if you could but there is nothing except pain and agony and fear—  
  
*  
  
This is what you know.  
  
You are James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.  
  
( _But you are more than that, you are more than a name-rank-serial number, you are more than pain and more than fear, you are, you are—_ )  
  
James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.  
  
 _James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.  
  
James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557—_  
  
*  
  
“Bucky! Oh my God…”  
  
You think you’re hallucinating. You mumble, “Is…is that…”  
  
“It’s me. Steve.”  
  
“Steve,” you say, a stunned grin spreading over your face. “Steve.”  
  
He’s too big and you’re still in agony and part of you thinks you must be dreaming him up, but that doesn’t matter right now, because it’s  _him_.  
  
*  
  
Only much later does it really hit you, how everything has changed. Steve’s eight inches taller and almost invincible and for Chrissake, he doesn’t need  _you_  anymore. He doesn’t need James Buchanan Barnes to pull bullies off him in some back-alley scrap.  
  
He’s a hero, a shining beacon of hope after that (reckless) one-man liberation of the 107th, and next to him you feel dirty and tarnished and insignificant. You, who marched through the squelching mud and got blood on your hands too thick to ever wash away and spent God-knows-how-long in that room with Zola doing God-knows-what to you.  
  
You are tarnished. Your dreams are filled with fire and needles and scorching acid. You were too weak to escape, too helpless to resist, and too feeble to forget the memory of pain.  
  
You see the way the doctors mutter over you, the way Steve looks at you with his eyes full of worry, and you want to shout yourself hoarse. This is backwards, it’s all backwards. You are the one who’s supposed to protect him, not the other way around. You are the master of your own destiny and you are not broken,  _you are not broken_.  
  
“I’m fine,” you keep saying, over and over again, trying not to snap with impatience. You sit by yourself at the bar until Steve joins you, and you knock back glass after glass of whisky or gin to dull the phantom flames that burn under your skin and scratch at the edges of your mind. You see Steve’s eyes flick over you, his brows drawing together, and you resist the urge to growl. So what if your hair flops over your forehead? So what if your uniform is loose and wrinkled? No one in this crowded, noisy bar is going to give a damn.  
  
“You’re  _not_  fine, Bucky,” Steve answers, with weary patience.  
  
You grunt. “You’re a big hero now and everything. Don’t need to go worrying about me.”  
  
“But I do.” Steve sips his cold beer, eyes never leaving your face. “Look…it’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about Zola or what happened in the factory.”  
  
Your fingers twitch around your glass. The truth is ugly, the truth is dirty, and you don’t want him to see how tainted and tarnished you are.  
  
“But you don’t have to act like it was nothing. You look like you barely get any sleep anymore and you seem down, and—I’m here, Buck, you know that.”  
  
You push your glass back and forth on the counter, thinking about what to tell him. What you  _can_  tell him.  
  
“It just…gives you a new perspective on things,” you finally say, in a quiet voice. “Almost dying, I mean. You start thinkin’ about the things you regret, what you’d do if you had a second chance, what’s really important and what’s not.”  
  
You stare down at the remnants of your gin before you break out into a harsh, barking laugh. “Damn, I’m drunk.”  
  
It’s not true, and you know Steve knows it’s not true, but he doesn’t say anything.  
  
You cannot shed your pain or your nightmares the way a snake sheds its skin. You are weak and you are tarnished. But you are not broken, you can still walk and you can still shoot, and when Steve asks you to follow him, you say yes without hesitation.  
  
*  
  
You bury your pain and your nightmares and the memory of your weakness with the weight of a gun in your hands and the harsh metallic song of bullets firing. You are good, you are a damn good soldier, and every time you take out an enemy soldier gunning for Steve you feel pieces of yourself coming back.  
  
You can still protect him, the way you’ve always done, ever since you first saw him bruised and beaten in that nameless alley. You are tarnished, but you can still run and you can still shoot. You are not broken.  
  
*  
  
Being part of Captain America’s Howling Commandos isn’t just dangerous missions and blowing things up (though that’s certainly a big part of it). It also means getting dragged in front of film crews and talking—about the war (but only in shiny terms, not the violent, ugly truth of it), about Steve, about anything that might inspire and raise morale.  
  
You get special attention because you’re the only one who knew Steve before he became Captain America. Back then, nobody gave a damn about a poor artist prone to sickliness and getting into fights with men twice his size, but now it’s a source of fascination. Before, people would’ve called him stupid and reckless. Now, he’s suddenly plucky and courageous. You, of course, view the whole thing with a sour-tinged cynicism. But then, you suppose you enjoy talking about Steve and how many times you’d had to finish up his fights. You can’t help bragging, just a little, about how you recognized the good in him long before anyone else would even give him the time of day.  
  
Steve, in turn, makes you out to be some larger-than-life hero. You listen to his official interviews, and you think about how the truth is, you are not made to fit in a neat little box with a smart bow tie on top. You are everything Steve describes, sure, but you are also the dirty back-alley brawler who laughed when you tasted blood on your face; you are the man who drank himself cross-eyed and started bar fights after your parents died, who thought about stealing medicine from some impoverished pharmacist because Steve’s fever wouldn’t go down, who ran through the battlefield with the shriek of gunfire and death in your ears, who was strapped down to a table and stuck with needles full of liquid fire, who would’ve turned your back on the war and the country that left you to die if Steve hadn’t asked you to follow him. You are cocky grins and swaggering steps hiding too much fear and too much rage.  
  
In the darkest, most vulnerable corner of your heart, you know that you are not a good man. But Steve thinks you are. He’s seen you at your best and your worst, seen what lies underneath the grinning façade, and he still describes you as his hero—not just because it makes a good story for the camera, but because he believes it. And if he thinks so, that’s enough for you.  
  
*  
  
You understand that fear unmakes men. It shaves off every pretense until the only thing left is a naked, vulnerable core. You understand this, because it is what haunts your dreams.  
  
So when the Howling Commandos have to interrogate some HYDRA soldiers but have no luck with their usual methods this time, you are the one who takes over. You plant your boot on one soldier’s neck and press down, crushing his windpipe, never blinking even once the man starts to beg for his life. You let go only when he tells you what you want to know.  
  
Steve has a funny look in his eyes the rest of the day. The silence stretched between you is tense and uncomfortable. It’s not until you’re both lying in their sleeping rolls that you’re tired enough of the silence to finally speak.  
  
“D’you think I should’ve felt bad?”  
  
Steve turns his head. “What’s that, Buck?”  
  
“I don’t like hurting people and making them beg for their life.” You look back at him, his eyes shining oddly in the dark. “But I’d do it all over again if I had to. Someone’s gotta be the one to do it.”  
  
“I know, Bucky.”  
  
“They’re all a bunch of sick scum, anyhow.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
You are quiet for a long moment.  
  
“You wanna know what it felt like, being strapped to that table in the factory?”  
  
Steve inhales sharply. He doesn’t say a word.  
  
“It felt like they were trying to strip everything away,” you go on, in a flat voice. “Trying to wear down everything, every lie and half-lie you tell yourself to make yourself feel better, until there’s nothing left but an ugly truth you don’t want to know.”  
  
“Bucky…” He reaches over and gingerly touches your shoulder. You do not move.  
  
“When you’re staring death in the face, there ain’t any glory or peacefulness about it. All you have is fear. And that’s when you see what you really are—weak, powerless, just a bag of blood ‘n bones that’s so easy to destroy.  
  
“I didn’t wanna be broken, Steve,” and your voice is almost a hiss in the dark. “I hated that fear. I wasn’t gonna let them break me. And I’m not gonna let anyone try that on me ever again.”  
  
Steve wraps his arms around you and doesn’t speak. After a moment, you lean your head against his shoulder and let out a long breath. You are more than pain and fear and you are not broken.  
  
You are not broken.  
  
*  
  
You fall.  
  
You fall, and you scream.  
  
You scream in your helplessness and your fear, because you’re going to die and you don’t want to die—  
  
You are falling—  
  
*  
  
You are pain.  
  
You die.  
  
*  
  
You are not dead.  
  
You are pain and agony all over, a broken body dragged along the cold snow.  
  
You see blood trailing from the stump that remains of your left arm, staining the pure snow red.  
  
When numb darkness claims you, it’s a relief.  
  
*  
  
You are pain.  
  
You hear the whir of a saw, feel it bite into your shoulder.  
  
You want to scream, but you can’t, your muscles are too loose and they won’t respond but you are  _awake_  and you can  _feel_  and  _Christ no please stop it’s too much what are you doing to me—_  
  
*  
  
You swim out of the numb blackness.  
  
You don’t have any sensation in your left arm, but you see that you still have two hands. Two mismatched hands. One flesh, the other metal, gleaming in the dull light.  
  
You think you feel a faint flicker of horror, but mostly, you’re numb with shock.  
  
Strangers stare at you. No, you recognize one of them, the bald one with the glasses, and something shrieks in your head that this isn’t right, you have to escape, you try to choke them—  
  
*  
  
You think you remember fragments. Flashes.  
  
Electricity.  
  
Pain.  
  
You think there was something else you had to remember, something important—  
  
*  
  
You think you remember—  
  
*  
  
You remember nothing at all.  
  
*  
  
For a long time, there is nothing except darkness and ice, cold enough to burn.  
  
You know very little, but you do know this:  
  
They call you the Winter Soldier.  
  
You know how to use a sniper rifle, how to kill people with a gun or a knife or your bare hands, but you don’t know why you know this.  
  
There is nothing except the mission. There is nothing after the mission. There is nothing that came before the mission.  
  
If you disobey them, or if you fail, they will punish you.  
  
You are good. You do not fail. You do not want to be punished.  
  
*  
  
You remember the hum of electricity, the way it burns as it courses through your brain and scrapes your brain cells raw, and you do not like it.  
  
But you are the asset. You do not get choices. You cannot disobey your masters.  
  
*  
  
“Bucky?” the blond-haired man in the blue jacket says, his voice trembling with shock.  
  
“Who the hell is Bucky?” you ask.  
  
*  
  
“I knew him,” you say.  
  
Alexander Pierce tells you that your work has been a gift to mankind, and you shaped the century. You do not remember any of this, but he is your master, so you suppose it must be true, but…  
  
“But I knew him,” you say again, and you don’t know why or how, you don’t even know his name, but you  _knew_ the man on the bridge, and you desperately want an answer.  
  
They don’t give you an answer.  
  
They give you a rubber bit and strap you into the machine and you know you failed, you failed and now you will be punished with agonizing pain—  
  
*  
  
You have failed.  
  
You were careless, and now you are trapped under a metal beam on the disintegrating helicarrier. You have failed your mission, and now you will die.  
  
You feel the cold bite of fear close its jaws around your throat. You do not fear much, but you fear death. You do not want to die.  
  
Captain America drops down, and for a moment you think he’s come to finish you off.  
  
But…no.  
  
He is lifting the beam, straining against the weight, and you pull yourself out, gritting your teeth against the pain in your dislocated shoulder.  
  
Why did Captain America save you?  
  
“You know me,” Captain America says.  
  
“ _No I don’t!_ ” And you don’t know why you feel so  _angry_  at his words.  
  
“Bucky. You’ve known me your whole life.”  
  
You lash out blindly. You are angry, you are losing control, you are unstable and erratic—  
  
“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes—”  
  
“ _Shut up!_ ” you yell back, because you are not—you don’t have a name, you are HYDRA’s weapon, you are the asset, you are nothing else, you are nothing,  _nothing_ —  
  
You are supposed to kill him quickly and finish your mission, but you don’t. You are losing control, you are unstable, erratic, and you hate Captain America for making you this way. But the worst part is, there’s a weak but clear voice in the back of your head that asks you: What if he’s right? What if you weren’t always the asset, what if you once had a name and you were Captain America’s friend—  
  
No. You are not. You were never.  
  
“ _You’re! My! Mission!_ ” you scream as you pound your fist into Captain America’s face, trying to drown out that voice in your head, that voice that tastes of electricity and rubber and ice and  _pain_. You are unstable, erratic, and the worst part is that you sound like you’re trying to convince  _yourself_.  
  
“Then finish it,” he tells you. “‘Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”  
  
You look at his battered face, the tears in his eyes, and there’s a voice in the back of your head screaming at you that this is— _wrong_ , it’s all  _wrong_ —  
  
*  
  
Captain America falls.  
  
You fall after him.  
  
You pull him out of the water. You watch him exhale. Then you leave.  
  
You don’t know why you did the things you did, except that...it felt  _right_. You know this. You don’t know how or why, but you  _know_.  
  
*  
  
You visit the Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America and the Howling Commandos in search of answers.  
  
This is what you know.  
  
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, also known as Bucky Barnes.  
  
You and Steve Rogers were best friends. (“Inseparable on the schoolyard and battlefield…”)  
  
In World War II, HYDRA captured and tortured you, but Steve saved you. You joined his Howling Commandos. You were a sniper. You were his right-hand man.  
  
You died falling from a train.  
  
Except you didn’t die.  
  
You look at your own face on that glass wall, a memorial for a hero. You think, bitterly, that this is all a great big joke, and someone, somewhere, is laughing at you.  
  
Because you are no hero.  
  
*  
  
You dream of falling, an outstretched hand just out of reach.  
  
You dream of the roar of a train, the shriek of the wind, a desperate shout.  
  
You dream of a red, white, and blue uniform with a white star, blond hair and wide blue eyes.  
  
You dream of fear, and you dream of cold, and you dream of death.  
  
You dream of falling.  
  
*  
  
The first thing that comes back to you isn’t the memory of who you were. The first thing that comes back is a sense of  _loss_. Perhaps you have always felt it somewhere in the back of your mind, like a splinter or a scab bleeding at the edges. But now, without any mission or master or electricity to remind you that you are nothing but an asset, you feel that loss, painfully. Who you were. Who you are. How to be a person again, not just an asset.  
  
You feel the hole inside you, and you want to fill it so it will stop hurting.  
  
There’s a surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) number of books written about Captain America and his Howling Commandos. You spend many afternoons in public libraries, sitting at the table in your loose cloth jacket and your baseball cap pulled low over your face, devouring the words on the pages, hungrily looking for clues to the man you once were.  
  
There is not a lot written about James Buchanan Barnes. At best, the man you once were merits a few sentences or so. Perhaps you were a private person; perhaps you didn’t have many friends or family members; perhaps you were simply seen as unimportant, just another poor young man among many during the Great Depression. All you get are the same bits and pieces: that you were best friends with Steve Rogers since the both of you were boys, that you were drafted into the army (you hadn’t enlisted, like the Smithsonian plaque said, and you find something darkly humorous about this), that you were a skilled sniper, that you were captured and tortured by HYDRA, and you died falling off a train.  
  
You learn more about Steve Rogers than about yourself, and you consume the information just as eagerly. His father, Joseph Rogers, died in World War I before he was even born. His mother, Sarah Rogers, was a nurse who courageously braved the TB wards. He was always small and sickly, and barely eked out a living as an artist before he became Captain America. He wanted to fight for his country, he wanted to do something  _good_ , and that’s how he ended up receiving the serum that made him into a supersoldier. But he wasn’t a soldier then, not really; he toured around the country selling bonds as a propaganda icon. He only got his chance when the USO tour took him to Europe, and he struck out on his own to save the men from the 107th whom HYDRA captured. Soon after you fell from that train, he crashed a plane into the arctic and was presumed dead, until he was found and awakened seventy years later.  
  
You see reflections of yourself in the story of Steve Rogers’s life. You barely exist as a named shadow, but you are there all the same—his best friend, his protector, his roommate, the reason he single-handedly liberated a POW camp and finally got to become a soldier, his right-hand man.  
  
You think about his last line to you:  _‘Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line._  
  
And you wonder at the man you used to be.  
  
*  
  
You don’t quite feel like Bucky Barnes, not yet, not with a memory full of holes, but though your Winter Soldier programming is irreversibly cracked and riddled with fissures, you can’t get rid of it, either. You always spend the first few minutes in each new location cataloguing every escape route, every line of sight a potential sniper would have to your head. You never walk around without knives and handguns strapped to your body, and you sleep with a gun under your pillow every night. There is a voice shrieking in your head to stop this, because this is not what normal people do, but another part of you is tense, watchful, fearful that HYDRA will show up and try to drag you back.  
  
(And you won’t, you won’t go back, you are not their asset and you don’t want to be their weapon, you know this, you know it.)  
  
The news that you can catch from the internet in computer stores tells you that SHIELD has collapsed on itself and HYDRA has fallen. You are not certain if you feel safe yet. But as the days, then weeks wear on, you manage to talk yourself down to carrying only two knives and one handgun, you do not automatically reach for your weapons when someone approaches or speaks to you, and you are able to breathe when you linger in open public spaces now.  
  
*  
  
You dream—you are not sure what you dream of, but when you wake up, there’s drying salt on your cheeks, and you think—no, you  _know_ —that in another lifetime, you were not an asset or a weapon. You loved, and you were loved.  
  
*  
  
At first, you fear that your memories will never return. That you are too damaged and too broken, scrubbed one too many times, and now you’re nothing left except a defective asset, a malfunctioning weapon, a ghost of a man, vainly trying to grasp something,  _anything_.  
  
Then the memories come back, in fits and starts, and you regret remembering anything at all. Because you remember—you used to be better, you were not always good but you  _wanted_  to be, but HYDRA took that away from you and forced you to be what you are: someone who hurts other people.  
  
You look at your face in the mirror and you think about who you are.  
  
You think about Bucky Barnes. You think about the feel of a brick in your hand, the sound of bones breaking under your fists, the pain of needles filled with acid fire, the stench of mud and the chafe of an icy wind.  
  
You think about the Winter Soldier. You think about blood so thick you could choke on it, the tears and the begging and the screams of the dead, names upon names of the targets you have killed.  
  
You look at your face in the mirror. You do not like the man who stares back at you.  
  
Steve is the one bright spot in your memories. You remember that he was the one who made you good, made you wiser and kinder and a better man. You want to go to him, to see that light of happiness in his blue eyes once more. But you don’t. All you wanted was to protect him, but you couldn’t even do that much, in the end, because you forgot him so easily and shot him and punched him until his face was bruised and bloody and made him cry for your broken, tarnished soul. You are a traitor and a killer; you are tarnished and broken beyond repair, and there’s nothing you can give him except more pain.  
  
The worst part about remembering is realizing that so much of this was  _your fault_. You had so many chances to take out every HYDRA soldier and scientist in the room, but you never did. You never even  _tried_ , the thought never even  _occurred_  to you; you just sat back and opened your mouth for the rubber bit and took the punishment like a _dog_.  
  
You could have resisted, but you didn’t.  
  
You deserve your pain.  
  
So you remain alone, and you wander aimlessly, spurred by the pain of the empty hole in your chest.  
  
*  
  
You dream of blood, snapped necks, glassy-eyed stares, bullets and knives and cold, stiff bodies to be disposed of.  
  
You wake up with a trapped scream clawing at the insides of your throat.  
  
You lie in the darkness, and you do not go back to sleep.  
  
*  
  
You want to think that HYDRA made you do the things you did. You want to think that they took you and they broke you until they made you what you were.  
  
But in the dead of the night, in the space between alertness and sleep, when you are alone and staring at a dark ceiling, when all your lies and your masks have cracked and fallen away to uncover an open wound of honesty…you are afraid that that’s not true.  
  
You knew how to kill, long before HYDRA ever got a hold of you. You did not hesitate to pull the trigger when an enemy soldier stepped into your crosshairs. You did not feel bad about torturing men for information. When you were still a boy, you got into plenty of fights, nasty ones, mostly for Steve’s sake but sometimes just because you wanted someone to hit, and one time you picked up a brick and nearly put it through a man’s head.  
  
You are tarnished. You were tarnished long before you met Steve. You thought being around him could remove some of your dirt and your darkness, but that wasn’t true then and it sure as hell ain’t anywhere near the truth now.  
  
*  
  
You want revenge.  
  
You want to find the people who stole your life from you and made you commit crimes you never wanted to, and you want to make them suffer.  
  
But you think about how many people you’ve killed, and how much blood is already on your hands. You think about how HYDRA took advantage of you and honed you into something you never wanted to be, and you don’t want to be what they made you anymore, never again.  
  
(And you think about—it shouldn’t matter anymore, you’re beyond hope, beyond redemption, but—you think about how Steve would be disappointed in you, and that’s enough to make you lay down your weapons.)  
  
When the guilt gets to be too much, you think about putting your gun to your head and ending it all. You think it’s what you deserve. You’re a killer and a traitor and you’re tarnished forever. You tried to kill Steve. This is what you deserve.  
  
But you can’t.  
  
Whatever else you are, you still fear death. You remember what it felt like the first time, falling through the icy air, knowing nothing except sheer terror, and you can’t go through that again.  
  
You can’t pull the trigger. You’re a coward.  
  
*  
  
Sometimes you get a cold feeling on the back of your neck, like someone’s watching you from afar, and you have the urge to run and hide. Other times you catch a glimpse of blond hair in the crowd, and you freeze and quickly turn in the other direction. The suspicion in the pit of your stomach sprouts into full-fledged certainty: Steve is following you.  
  
You think back so many years ago, a lifetime ago, to all those dames who lined up for a turn to dance with you but hardly gave Steve the time of day. They saw him as your shadow, your follower. But that’s not right, you think. Sure, you were the one who dragged him to double-dates and the Cyclone at Coney Island and late bar nights. But you think maybe, you are the one who’s always followed  _him_. You followed him the first time the two of you met in that grungy alley; you followed him back to his apartment; you followed him into all those fights he’d gotten himself into over the years. The history books paint you as his “sidekick.” You are  _his_  shadow, his second-in-command, his follower.  
  
But perhaps that’s not right either. He followed you into war. You followed him (him, not Captain America, but Steve Rogers, the little guy from Brooklyn too dumb not to run away from a fight) back into the jaws of death. You fell from a train into an icy river; he fell in a plane, crashing into the arctic.  
  
Even when you remembered nothing else but violence and the cold tang of metal, something in his eyes, his voice, his face, cracked your programming like thawing ice, letting memories slip through before HYDRA chased them away with electricity and cauterized the wound. But even that could not last. You followed him into the waters of the Potomac to pull him out. And he is following you once more now.  
  
You have spent your lives following each other.  
  
You wonder, vaguely, if this is fate.  
  
*  
  
You remember that you don’t believe in fate. It has not treated you kindly. And there is no reason for Steve to keep following you now, because you’re a murderer and a traitor and you almost  _killed_  him. You’re broken and you’re tarnished beyond repair. If he’s still too dumb to realize that, you’re supposed to to stay away, so you can protect him from yourself.  
  
But you can’t. You can’t, because you are lonely and you are weak, you cling to faded memories of happier times even though you have no right to them, and your weakness disgusts you but you can’t rid yourself of it.  
  
So when he is sitting in a café by himself one day, looking down at the menu with his shoulders slumped and a melancholy expression on his face, you slowly slide into the seat across from him.  
  
His head snaps up. His eyes widen.  
  
“Bucky.”  
  
It almost sounds like a prayer, and you twitch, violently, because you are the farthest thing possible from a saint.  
  
“Steve,” you say, because you don’t know what else to say.  
  
He swallows. The look of happiness on his face makes you want to ram your fist into the nearest wall, because you are not—you don’t deserve his concern.  
  
“You…remember?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah,” you answer. “I remember.”  
  
It’s quiet for a long moment, the silence thick and clotting in the air. He starts to speak several times, but stops, as though he’s not sure what to say, or maybe how to say it.  
  
“It’s all my fault,” Steve finally says, with a leaden weariness that makes him seem so old all of a sudden. “If I had just reached a little further on that train—”  
  
“Stop it,” you snap. “You wanna play the guilt game? I almost  _killed_  you.  _Twice_.”  
  
“I dislocated your shoulder and choked you unconscious.” Steve rubs his forehead. “I still have nightmares about it…”  
  
“I shot you and damn near broke your face,” you retort. “And I’m probably an internationally wanted criminal.”  
  
“It wasn’t your fault. I read your file…” His gaze flits downward, and his fingers curl into fists on the table. “What they did to you—”  
  
You don’t want to hear about how broken you are, so you say, “It was still my hands. I can still remember doing all of it. I killed—” You stop yourself. Even if Steve already knows, he doesn’t need to hear this again. Doesn’t need to hear about how you’re so neck-deep in blood that even several lifetimes of absolution couldn’t purge your soul.  
  
“You’re the victim, Bucky,” Steve says softly.  
  
You twitch again. Even more violently. “That’s not true,” you say, your voice harsh. “They couldn’t turn me into something I wasn’t. Maybe this is just who I am all along and you never should’ve—”  
  
“Bucky,” Steve interrupts you, voice gentle but firm.  
  
And suddenly your anger is gone, there’s a lump burning in your throat, and you want to cry. You don’t understand how Steve can still believe in you after everything you’ve done. You want him to yell and hit you and tell you he doesn’t want to see you ever again, because that is what you deserve. His kindness, his concern, sink like a knife blade into the pieces of your broken soul and hurt you more than anything else.  
  
“I’ve talked to Sam about post-traumatic stress disorder and things like that, and…there are people who can help you.”  
  
“I don’t need help,” you say. “And even if I did, I don’t deserve—I’m not  _good_ , Steve,” and you want to snap at him but you are too drained and too tired and too haunted by the ghosts of everyone you’ve killed. “Even before HYDRA—I didn’t feel bad about hurting people. And I could’ve—I  _should’ve_  refused to follow their orders but I didn’t, I _didn’t_ , I’m not—like you, I’m  _not good_  and you don’t need me so  _stop_ —”  
  
“I’ll always need you,” Steve says simply. “What happened wasn’t your fault, don’t you  _dare_  say it was. You  _are_ good, Bucky. You stayed by me all those times when I was too sick to even see straight. You took punches for me when no one else cared. You are  _good_ , and no matter what, I’ll never give up on you. So please...please let me help.”  
  
You hesitate, though you feel your resolve beginning to crumble. “I can get by on my own.”  
  
Steve almost smiles. “Thing is, you don’t have to.”  
  
You blink, and frown at the sound of that.  
  
Steve puts a hand over your metal one. You don’t feel the warmth of it, but you feel the light pressure. “You saved me,” he says. “Even when you didn’t remember who I was, you saved me. I couldn’t—” His face twists with grief. “I failed you once. I’m not gonna let that happen ever again. We’re in this together, Buck. I promise.”  
  
You sit in silence. “’Til the end of the line?” you ask, your voice cracking.  
  
“’Til the end of the line,” Steve agrees, and he smiles.  
  
*  
  
You are still putting the pieces of yourself back together, but this is what you know:  
  
You are Bucky Barnes.  
  
You were the Winter Soldier.  
  
You are the master of your own destiny. You will not be what anyone else has tried to forge you into.  
  
You have killed and you have betrayed and you have too much blood on your hands, you have lived through unimaginable horrors, but you are still alive, and Steve believes in you.  
  
Steve believes in you.  
  
You will soldier on.  
  
You are not broken.


End file.
